“While I,” Esquire Wojciech spoke up, “think that if witchcraft exists, it’s better to be versed in it than not. I think—”

He fell silent, seeing Zawisza’s menacing look.

“And I think,” the knight said sharply, “that all the evil of this world comes from thinking. Particularly among people who have no inclination at all towards it.”

Wojciech leaned even lower over the harness he was cleaning and greasing. Reynevan waited a little longer before speaking again.

“Sir Zawisza?”

“Aye?”

“In the tavern, during the dispute with that Dominican, you didn’t conceal… How should I put it…? That you support the Czech Hussites. Or that you’re more for them than against, at least.”

“And what, you immediately label such thoughts as heresy?”

“Among others,” Reynevan admitted a moment later. “But I’m more intrigued by—”

“By what?”

“By what happened at the Battle of Německý Brod in twenty-two, when you were taken captive. For legends are already circulating—”

“Such as?”

“That the Hussites captured you because you felt it beneath you to flee but couldn’t fight, being an emissary.”

“Is that the rumour?”

“It is. But also that… That King Sigismund shamefully fled and left you in the lurch.”

Zawisza said nothing for a time.

“And you would like to know the truth?” he finally said.

“If,” Reynevan replied hesitantly, “it would not inconvenience you—”

“Why would it inconvenience me? Conversation passes the time agreeably. Why not then converse?”

Despite his declaration, the knight from Garbów again fell silent for a long time and played with the empty mug. Reynevan wasn’t sure if Zawisza was waiting for a question, but he didn’t hurry to ask one. Rightly, as it turned out.

“Methinks I ought to begin at the beginning,” said Zawisza, “when Jogaila—sorry, I should say the Polish King Władysław II—sent me to the King of Hungary on a sensitive mission pertaining to his marriage to Queen Euphemia-Sophia, King Sigismund’s sister-in-law and widow of the late Czech King Wenceslaus. Nothing came of it, of course, for in the end King Władysław preferred Sophia of Halshany, but that wasn’t known then. King Władysław ordered me to make the necessary arrangements with Sigismund, mainly with regard to the dowry. So off I went. Not to Pressburg or Buda, though, but to Moravia, from where Sigismund was just setting out on another crusade to deal with his disobedient subjects, with the firm intention of capturing Prague and rooting out Hussite heresy in Bohemia once and for all.